


the place where you still remember dreaming

by museicalitea



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space, M/M, Minor Emil Nekola, Minor Otabek Altin, Outer Space
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-16
Updated: 2020-05-16
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:53:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24179266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/museicalitea/pseuds/museicalitea
Summary: Leo’s known for the longest time that this cannot be forever. Guanghong is from far away and maybe a time Leo could never even fathom. It takes eight minutes for the Sun’s light to reach Earth, and for those far-off stars, even the closest ones to the solar system: aren’t they so far away that the twinkling pinpricks they make in the sky are those stars, but a thousand years ago? Guanghong could be from a hundred thousand years ago. And how far is that, when you put distance to it?The stars call. Guanghong, in time, must go to answer.
Relationships: Leo de la Iglesia/Ji Guang-Hong
Comments: 1
Kudos: 5





	the place where you still remember dreaming

**Author's Note:**

> This is a fic I wrote a very long time ago, and enjoyed writing, and have tried several times to put the finishing touches on. For a while now, I have been doing my best to embrace "better finished than perfect" as a writing philosophy, and I thought—well, if not now, when? So here it is. I am fond of this one, and I'm very glad to at last let it out in the world.
> 
> Disclaimer for any astrophysicists that might be reading that I am not an astrophysicist or a scientist/engineer/etc by trade, and this isn't a story about the science of being from the stars, so it is going to kind of fluff around that bit of it. Just go with it.
> 
> Originally written for Leoji Week August 2017 for the prompt: "You look sad, when you think he can’t see you."

_ i want to go home, said the astronaut _

_ so come home, said ground control _

**_s o c o m e h o m e ,_ ** _ said the voice from the stars _

⋆ ★ ⋆

Sitting beside Leo in the grass, Guanghong is warm and bright, blooming and blossoming like the flowers around him. His tongue is poking out where he’s trying to make a daisy chain. A childhood—an entire life—without daisies nor buttercups nor any such thing as grass has granted him unpractised fingers; space and the practicalities of his ship have left him with fingernails too close to the bud to cut into anything, not even a filament of a flower stem. Leo watches him pushing at that daisy with nails now painted dusky rose pink, a sight that awed Guanghong once, a sight he finally grew the courage to ask about. Now it’s a habit for Leo to get out the little polish collection he built up with donations from his younger sisters, and stroke the brush over each of Guanghong’s curious fingertips one by one; even the two metal composite fingers, which have little grooves at their ends like there might have been fingernails there, once upon a time.

In his own lap is a daisy crown. Layered, intricate, the kind with long, braided stems because he’s just that good and his littlest cousins kept wanting prettier princess crowns, ones that wouldn’t break with one overclumsy touch. He leans over and settles it on Guanghong’s head, feather-light. Still bent over his one brave daisy, Guanghong doesn’t notice, so Leo scoots back and whips out his phone to capture Guanghong in the light of Earth for the ten-thousandth time.

Later, he uploads the photos from that afternoon to his laptop. One from just when Guanghong noticed the flower crown stands out, and Leo pulls it up to view it in full resolution. In the photo, caught in the sunlight, Guanghong is the prettiest being Leo has laid eyes on. He’s looking beyond and around the camera. His gaze is focused and full; as though despite the expanse of hills, the flowers, the road in the distance, the brilliant day, Guanghong has eyes only for the person behind the lens.

_ (five) _

Guanghong is more than reality. Sometimes, Leo has to pinch himself to make sure he’s not dreaming.

Leo gets off his shift at the records store at four, and makes his way to the library two blocks away, backpack over one shoulder. Guanghong is already there, curled up on a beanbag in the children’s section. He’s buried in a book with a navy-blue cover, and there are half a dozen more scattered around him. As ever, Leo expects they’re all about space: the stars; the planets and the sun; the universe as far as they know.

Guanghong flips a page and adjusts his glasses. They look kind of high-tech for reading glasses. They are, in reality,  _ impossibly _ high-tech. There’s some high-level translation program embedded in them, one that latches onto text the way the set of vine-like filaments melded through Guanghong’s skull let him interpret every language on Earth and a hundred thousand languages beyond.

These filaments are what told him what the  _ most common first language on Earth _ was, and what translated his name into a tongue someone on Earth could understand. This same map of neurons and space metal is what then figured out that the most common language in  _ this _ part of the planet is; but Leo was the one who told Guanghong that it didn’t matter if the name he went by wasn’t from the languages Leo spoke in his every day.

Guanghong had smiled in relief, and said it was the same on his planet.

Guanghong studies books about space like the gospel. He’s fascinated by Earth’s interpretations of a place few humans have ever been, and by how far-fetched all their space mythology is. It’s something he quibbles over endlessly with Leo; and despite everything, he keeps reading anyway.

He’s tried to explain it to Leo before, laying out star charts; both paper ones, and the vast ones on his spaceship’s computer in three dimensions, the one in four dimensions Leo can only see with another pair of those glasses on, one in five dimensions Leo doesn’t even want to see, the one he isn’t sure he should see. It might make it all too real. It might be more than he should know.

On some of those maps, there are stars marked bigger and brighter than they are in reality, and Guanghong calls them  _ anchor stars. _

“See,” he says one time, pointing with a finger, one untouched by the metal welded through his blood and bone which links him with his ship, “you take that one, and we could got to—say, that one. Second to the right, straight ahead. We’d get to—what do you call it?— _Alpha Leonis?_ We'd get there by morning.”

“Where’d you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“Space is omnidirectional,” Leo said, shaking his head so Guanghong wouldn't see his surprise at hearing those childhood words used so sincerely to depict science he barely understands. “Even if the Hubble telescope pictures disagree.”

“You need a system,” said Guanghong. “That’s all. We’ve got a whole branch of mathematics dedicated to positioning and navigation within the stars. You should look into making something like that too. Maybe then you’d be able to get into space.”

Leo wanted to argue that it wasn’t that simple: that there was time, and money, and resources, and the world wasn’t ready to go to space again. But he made a note of it anyway. Something to take back to the lab. Something to think over. He also gave Guanghong  _ Peter Pan and Wendy, _ so he could better verify for himself whether or not “second star to the right” was a valid measure of location and direction.

Once Guanghong had shown him some of the maths from his planet, it made more sense, even through the soft fog of translation.  Leo can now read and kind of understand bits and pieces of Guanghong’s language: mathematical symbols, the words for the elements, the word for  _ stars. _ The word for  _ an explosion of light that scatters in a thousand directions _ which roughly translates to  _ Guāng Hóng  _ which again roughly translates to  _ a bright and brilliant rainbow _ . 

In the library, as the clock ticks twelve past the hour, Leo crouches beside Guanghong and reaches out to squeeze his shoulder. Guanghong looks up, eyes bright behind the flickering text still spilling down his glasses.

Touch, after all, is universal. You never need to learn it to understand  _ hey, you ready to go? _ or  _ everything going okay? _ or  _ I’m here. _

Looks are another matter; like the one Guanghong gives Leo once his back is turned, for the briefest of seconds; achingly sad, weighed with something too great and terrible for him to bring up the courage to say.

_ (four) _

Leo’s known for the longest time that this cannot be forever. Guanghong is from far away and maybe a time Leo could never even fathom. It takes eight minutes for the Sun’s light to reach Earth—and for those far-off stars, even the closest ones to the solar system, aren’t they so far away that the twinkling pinpricks they make in the sky are those stars, but a thousand years ago? Guanghong could be from a hundred thousand years ago. And how far is that, when you put distance to it?

It’s a clear summer night that fizzles and grows unbearably hot, brighter than a thousand suns in that instant where the ship plummets above their city.

Leo’s barely unlocked his phone before the text comes in, a flurry of space emojis, rockets and stars and the night sky, and words spilling out so frantic he can hear them through the screen: _ ill b @ urs soon WEVE GOTTA CHECK THAT OUT OMGGGGGGGGG _

Emil drives fast when he’s excited, so Leo makes sure only to grab the necessities—his jacket, his sneakers, and an extra bottle of water for Emil, who always forgets about the practicalities of wild night-time alien-hunting excursions—before he heads out of the house and onto the street. Otabek’s close on his heels, with the bag that travels in his motorbike: the torches, the maps and pencils, the pocket first-aid kit which is mostly Band-Aids for Emil; and his point-and-shoot, because even Otabek gets excited by all this.

None of them are quite prepared for the ship, smoking but not on fire, larger than life; and neither are they prepared for the boy who pulls himself through the crushed entry hatch, and looks uncannily like them, and collapses over the edge of the stairs that didn’t unfold all the way and falls, bleeding, to the ground.

“I’m not saying he’s dangerous,” Otabek says a few nights later, after Guanghong tells them his story. Up on the rooftop, Otabek says he knows how to think better; a matter of perspective, and maintaining that mentality that gets him up here in the first place. Leo leads him to the rooftop over a semi-abandoned carpark downtown, because up here, there is the full expanse of sky, even though the city lights in the distance and the suburb lights all around drown out the stars. It’s still impossible to fathom that Guanghong is from up there. But seeing is believing, and perhaps the night sky can show him what his mind cannot.

“He  _ isn’t _ dangerous,” Leo says, rocking his legs into the openness below the ledge he’s perched on. “And he’s hurt right now, I don’t think he’s going to try anything that’s going to lead us in harm’s way.”

“I know,” says Otabek, unfolding his arms to rest his elbows on the ledge, hands clasped together. “And I think he’s being honest. He sounds trustworthy, and I don’t think you’re doing a bad thing.”

“What’s the  _ but _ , Beka?”

“He’s from another galaxy,” says Otabek. There’s something cautious and heavy in his voice. “One day, he’s going to have to go back.”

“Of course,” says Leo. It’s obvious. Guanghong’s from another planet. He’s far from home, he won’t want to stay here forever.

“Don’t you think he knows that too?”

Otabek’s words hang heavy in the air

“Beka?”

“Never mind.”

What Otabek had been about to say that night, but chose not to, was this:  _ don’t fall in love. _

But by that point, Leo had started to love Guanghong in some way. Advice would have been too late.

⋆ ★ ⋆

“I’m not from the stars,” Guanghong says, exasperated, every time Leo phrases it as such. “I just explore them. That’s all.”

He’s not quite telling the truth. He never has, so long as he’s been here, but Leo figures what’s out there can’t hurt him, and that if Guanghong’s safer not telling, Leo’s best going along with it.

But this is the strange side of Guanghong, the one that comes out whenever Leo brings up  _ space _ and  _ the stars _ and Guanghong’s ship, which Emil, Leo’s mechanic friend, has been working on fixing for the last two years. Emil recognised it for a spaceship immediately he saw it, and pounced on Guanghong the first time he saw  _ him _ and asked if he was an alien.

Guanghong said no. But then, Leo has wondered if he and Emil and Isabella and JJ and Otabek and everyone else in this city and on this planet is an alien to Guanghong.

“Wanna go see how the ship’s coming along?” Leo asks. “There’s a bus to that side of town in a few minutes.”

Guanghong hesitates.

“We’ll get it fixed soon,” Leo says, with as gentle a smile as he can muster. “Emil thinks he’s found the right oil combination to get everything running smoothly again, and he’s looking for replacement gears. It’ll be soon. I promise.”

Guanghong nods, and gets up from the bench. When Leo reaches out for his hand, he takes it, halfway between their bodies. At last, he looks at Leo, and smiles.

This is how it’s been for months. But today, Guanghong’s vanished, and Emil calls Leo at about the time he’d normally be heading out to Guanghong’s ship.

“Both my toolkits have vanished,” Emil says as soon as Leo picks up the phone. He doesn’t sound concerned, which makes Leo very concerned in turn.

“Vanished,” Leo repeats, because there’s something going on if Emil’s acting this casual about his toolkits. Granted, he never acts attached to them the way every other person in the world has those few things they would draw blood for, but even so, those toolkits are his livelihood and pay his rent and keep his stomach full.

“I think so,” Emil says. “About the same time as Guanghong headed off.”

“Was he at yours?”

“Said he’s leaving soon, and asked where I was keeping the parts for his ship, so I took him to the workshop, and—”

Emil’s words scatter and fade in Leo’s mind.

“Guanghong’s leaving?”

There’s a pause.

“Yeah,” Emil says. “I mean, he mentioned it a couple of weeks ago, I guess, but he is, soon. He didn’t tell you?”

“No,” Leo says. “Is he out at the ship?”

“Probably, yeah, but Leo—”

Leo hangs up, snatches his keys, and bolts down to his car.

_ (three) _

The world doesn’t stop just because you’ve been hurt. It doesn’t stop turning, even when the earth is falling out from under your feet, nor does the sun stop moving overhead even when the sky’s falling down.

It feels like the sky’s falling on Leo, and crushing him under its weight.

How long did they have yesterday? To Leo, it seemed like forever, stretching into the distance in a sunny haze of  _ together _ , and  _ on Earth, _ and  _ Guanghong, Guanghong, Guanghong and Leo _ like a prayer, a belief and a truth. A car journey wasn’t long enough to change his mind of that, and even now, Guanghong’s stiff pronouncement doesn’t seem like anything but a bad dream.

All the warning signs were there. Otabek’s been saying for weeks now that Guanghong doesn’t seem like his usual self; that he’s been looking into a distance only he can see. Leo wouldn’t believe him, even though Otabek is an older friend than Guanghong, and arguably, a closer one.

Yesterday they had forever. Now, they don’t even have a day.

While Leo’s lying in bed, staring out the window with the curtains apart and starlight spilling in, he waits and waits to hear rockets come to life. Any moment now, Guanghong will be gone. Any moment. The sky will glow orange, and there will be an explosion you could hear for miles around, and Guanghong will become a shooting star, a comet, a passing wish and a dream through the atmosphere for the last time.

But comets get burned under the weight of oxygen and their own course, too fast and too bright to realise the end is near. Leo is closer to a comet than Guanghong is.

Guanghong is going to get past the upper bounds of the atmosphere, and disappear into the deepest reaches of space, where not even NASA and the Hubble telescope will be able to find him.

There’s a rustle underneath the window, and Leo curls up under the sheets. He wonders how powerful the telescopes are on Guanghong’s ship. He wonders if they could see down to his house as Guanghong goes flying into the night. Surely they’re not as powerful as that, he thinks, his last faint comfort; and they’re telescopes, not X-rays; they wouldn’t be able to see through the walls.

This is a good thing, because Leo won’t let Guanghong see the way his face crumples and the way his eyes sting every time he thinks of him.

Grief makes you exhausted, and Leo succumbs without realising. Heavy eyes close, and the starlight gives way to the dark of sleep; sleep, and silence.

⋆ ★ ⋆

Slowly, slowly, Guanghong grows on Leo. He doesn’t notice exactly how; but Leo has extremely observant friends.

Emil once mentioned in passing how Leo always got Guanghong  _ jianbing _ from a roadside cart after he said he liked it  _ once, _ and how come he just rolled his eyes about treating Emil to  _ trdelník  _ whenever they went to the one Czech bakery in town? Leo rolled his eyes again and bought Emil his  _ trdelník _ as a peace offering, but thought about it a lot for a few days after.

He thought about the evenings he’d spent with Guanghong pointing out the stars and the paths between them, formations unlike the constellations he knew, and was more entranced by the movement of Guanghong’s hand than the lights in the sky—

—and how Guanghong rides shotgun in his car more often than Emil, these days, and how Leo has learned enough of Guanghong’s city’s history and his favourite games and food to talk about them as though they were his own, and how he knows how surprisingly soft metal can feel when you are holding it in your hand.

—and how when they found the spaceship, he volunteered to take Guanghong back to his place without a second thought, and they had no idea what they were dealing with, and all Leo saw was a young man who had dark blue blood seeping through his hairline and metal peeling away from his fingers and wrist and an unearthly translucence to his skin and for all that, still looked frighteningly human.

—and about how happy Guanghong looked eating the  _ jianbing, _ and how Leo wanted to keep making him happy as long as he could.

“Y’know,” Emil says to Leo, while they’re on adjacent walls at the rock climbing centre, “I think you like him.”

“Who?” Leo says, tongue-in-cheek because he knows exactly who Emil’s talking about, but it can’t hurt to prod him, especially because Emil’s beau is back in town and honestly, he’d better be prepared to get what he gives if he keeps going with this.

“Guanghong,” Emil says, levering himself up another rock, and letting go to look at Leo head-on. “Man, you’ve got it bad for him.”

“So what if I do?” says Leo, reaching without looking to flick Emil on the forehead as he feels up for his next foothold.

_ So what if I do? _ meaning, of course,  _ it’s not going to hurt me. It’s Guanghong. _

_ (two) _

There’s nothing in the news, no sign of it across any social media. No talk of rockets, of aliens, of strange astral activities, and Leo only realises what that means late in the evening, when he hears footsteps outside.

There’s a knock. Small, uneven; like the person beyond the door doesn’t know how.

Leo opens it to find Guanghong, with red-rimmed eyes and oil-stained hands, in his laundered, rumpled space suit, like he’d thrust it in the back of a chest of drawers and pulled it out only yesterday for the first time in months. Clutched in his hands like a lifeline, a cardboard holder with two clear cups of Starbucks cold brew.

One of the first things Leo discovered about Guanghong after he crash-landed on Earth, after the terrifying revelation of how he healed from his injuries so quickly, was that he wasn’t physiologically equipped to consume any food warmer than about room temperature. One of the things Guanghong discovered for himself was the smell of coffee; like a drug, like a love potion to his nose.

Since then, the only coffee shops Leo’s taken Guanghong to are the ones that serve cold brew.

“Is this a peace offering?” Leo asks, staring at the drinks. He can’t quite make himself look Guanghong in the eyes. Not yet. Not while his heart feels like one stray, sharp word, and it’ll shatter.

“I want to apologise,” says Guanghong. “Before I go.”

Leo has to ask. “Were you always able to fix the ship?”

In his peripheral vision, Guanghong nods. Sniffs.

“Why didn’t you?” Leo’s eyes are burning, and his throat is tight; so tight, he can’t speak steadily. But he does his best, because he’s angry, he’s scared, he’s in love and the universe is too big, too confusing, and he might just be losing the most important part of it.

“I couldn’t, at first.” When they next come, Guanghong’s words are considered, like they have the weight of decades behind them. “I was hurt, I didn’t know where my ship was, and it would have been too overheated for me to work with anyway. But then I tried going out, that one night—”

“I was looking for you for two days.”

“You were so upset. And then you said you knew where to go, you knew someone who could help, and I was going to tell you then I didn’t need help. That I could fix it myself, and be gone. But… it’s beautiful here. So lively, so happy, so much  _ green _ —”

_ Green. _ Guanghong’s eyes somehow had the capacity to see that, and he’d revelled in it. Every moment he could, he’d run through the parks, dance through the forest on the hill, breathe it in like it gave him twice as much oxygen as the city. Leo never stopped to wonder if maybe, it did.

“And I couldn’t leave you. I didn’t want to leave  _ you.” _

“So you sabotaged your ship.”

“Emil’s been having fun with it. He liked learning about my home planet as much as you did.”

That much is true. But Guanghong never said he’d stayed for Emil.

“What’s changed?”

“I got a call from a friend in my sector.”

The timbre of Guanghong’s voice changes. It gets thicker; it catches. Leo looks at him at last.

Even through his tears, he can see that Guanghong’s crying too.

“The group we were hunting down have tracked onto me. They think I’ve got a set of new allies that I’m going to bring as reinforcements to our war. They’re trying to set a course for me, so they can find whoever I’ve gathered and destroy them. Leo…”

He ought to get it, but all Leo hears is the tremble and the heartbreak.

“Leo, they think  _ you’re _ my new ally. If I stay here, they’re going to come, and they’re going to kill you. Everyone in this city. Maybe everyone on Earth, if they’re mad enough.”

“That’s impossible,” Leo says, defiant. It’s all he has left. Logic: that the Earth is huge, that it’s impossible to wipe out seven billion people; that Guanghong is from outer space, and has survived here for two years, and can surely save the world. Isn’t that how the story always goes?

“They’ve killed whole civilisations before. Leo, your best hope is if I leave you behind like I’ve given you up as allies. We might still have time before they find me, and if I’m not here, they can’t find you. They won’t be able to hurt you.”

“Guanghong…”

“I never want to see you get hurt. Not if I can help it.”

“I understand,” says Leo. He doesn’t, not really, for what Guanghong’s caught up in is too vast and strange and terrifying for him to wrap his head around. But prioritising, saving lives,  _ humanity— _ that’s a language Leo knows well. Guanghong’s words are brave, and they’re true, and they hurt Leo more than he can put to words. But he has to try, if only so he knows he and Guanghong have no more secrets, no lies between them when they part.

“But, Guanghong… you weren’t even going to say goodbye?”

“I didn’t know how. I wasn’t sure if I should.”

“Guanghong, if you leave, I’m never going to see you again. And that’s… that’s a hole in my heart the rest of my life.”

Guanghong steps forward, and tears spill from his eyes as he opens his mouth.

“I know. Leo… I don’t want to leave.”

The night passes. Abandoned by the door, the cold brew drips condensation onto the carpet, and grows warm.

__

_ (one) _

The longer Guanghong stays, the more likely it is his enemies will pick up Earth on their radar. So it’s early, before sunrise, when Leo drives him out to that field, where his ship awaits, dented but whole and ready to leave. Leo parks and kills the engine, but makes no move to leave the car. It’s warmer in here. It’s one step below saying goodbye.

Guanghong doesn’t try to open his door either.

“I dunno if they can pick it up on alien radio or alien internet or whatever you have,” Leo says into the hollow silence after the sun breathes its first light over the horizon, “but if you can, let me know you got up there safe.”

Guanghong nods, with his hands clasped together between his legs.

“Hey,” Leo says, and reaches over to clasp Guanghong’s shoulder. And then he thinks  _ screw it, _ and pulls Guanghong into a hug. Guanghong gasps against his chest, but winds his arms around Leo and squeezes tight. “Shoot some alien bad guys for me and show ‘em who’s boss, got it?”

Guanghong laughs wet and sweet, like heavy dew on a daisy meadow, and Leo buries his face in his hair. They can’t stay like this forever, but until the both of them are out of tears and can face the morning clear-eyed and steady is good enough.

Life will have to be good enough from now on, and all Leo can do is go with the current, and hope the tide doesn’t sweep him under.

“You don’t have to stay,” Guanghong says, once they’ve disentangled themselves and he’s wiping his face on his spacesuit sleeve. “It’ll take me a while to finish getting ready for take-off and it’s kind of dangerous to be near the rockets when it launches.”

In a movie, Leo would stay anyway. But he has to let go sometime.

“I’ll wait ‘til you’re inside, and then I’ll head back. I’ll hear it when you take off, won’t I?”

Guanghong grins. “Definitely.”

“I’ll pick up Emil, then, and we’ll watch you head up from afar, how ‘bout that?”

The sky is streaked with soft yellow as Guanghong opens his door and steps out into the meadow. Leo crosses round the front of his car, and hand-in-hand, they walk through the daisies and rustling grass two hundred feet to Guanghong’s ship. Beside Leo, Guanghong’s steps are surer than ever, perfectly in sync with gravity at 9.81ms -2 . One hand is warm and dry in Leo’s; the other, trailing the air, light against the morning breeze. His chin is up, and the whole way, he looks to the horizon, and the sunrise.

A hatch opens with a creak and a clatter as they approach, and it lowers to form a ramp. They stare at it a moment. For two years, Guanghong has grown steadily more grounded here; could easily pass for a boy of grass and forests more than the one of stars and steel who plummeted into Leo’s life. But the steel seems to sing in the sun, and Guanghong steps forwards, just an inch; just enough.

It’s now, Leo realises, that he has to let go.

“Fly safely,” he says, as he pulls Guanghong’s hand up close. He leaves his last kiss there, over cool blue metal and chipped pink nail polish, so he can take in Guanghong’s burning, tender eyes with all the seconds he has left. “I’m really gonna miss you, Guanghong.”

Guanghong squeezes their hands together, and lifts his other hand to lay in Leo’s hair. “I’ll never forget you, Leo de la Iglesia.”

As Leo walks back through the meadow, the sun begins to grow warm on his back, and the grass sighs in the breeze:  _ It’ll be okay, it’ll be okay. _ There’s birdsong lilting and twittering through the air, and Leo thinks, as he slips over the fence, that walking solo is so much louder than walking together.

It’s not until he’s in the car, seatbelt on and fiddling with the radio, that he glances inadvertently across the meadow, and realises the ramp’s still down, and there’s a little spot of yellow and blue sitting on it.

When Leo drives away, he doesn’t let himself look back.

_ (ground control, i can see the stars) _

An email arrives for him, four and a half months later. Leo doesn’t recognise the address, but the server hasn’t earmarked it as spam, so he opens it.

_ Look under your bed. Never going to forget. _

Leo’s heart stops.

There’s a box under there; the box Guanghong had been collecting tiny, silly things in. At the very bottom is Leo’s battered childhood copy of  _ Peter Pan and Wendy. _ Leo pulls it out. It doesn’t really smell like Guanghong, just like musty paper, but Guanghong spent hours poring over this book after Leo gave it to him. It made sense, really; after all, Peter was a boy from the stars too, and it wasn’t easy for Wendy to see him leave. It was always harder to be Wendy, unable to fly, left behind where she could never follow.

Leo turns the cover page. And then everything that’s been welling up inside of him since the meadow, since the drive home, then to Emil, then out to see a spaceship become smaller and smaller on the horizon until it was utterly gone, straight on into the morning and beyond all the stars in the galaxy—

It comes out in a rush. Leo’s chest grows tight, and his throat clogs. Hot tears well up and drip onto his t-shirt, as he reads and re-reads the inscription from a hand used to alien runes and not the Roman alphabet. Every word is spelled perfectly, even where the pen has pressed hard and frustrated into the page.

It’s a last goodbye. Maybe all they have now is dreams; maybe Guanghong was only ever a dream.

But Leo will wait for him, as long as it takes.

⋆ ★ ⋆

_ Leo: _

_ You know that place between sleep and awake, that place where you still remember dreaming? That’s where I’ll always love you. That’s where I’ll be waiting. _

**Author's Note:**

> [opening epigraph](https://twitter.com/jonnysun/status/517461703630794752?s=20)  
> closing epigraph and title - Tink, "Hook" (1991 film)
> 
> (also a note: I literally found out like... yesterday that the aforementioned closing epigraph quote doesn't actually come from _Peter Pan_... but in the interests of not having to rewrite this whole thing please just accept that in this AU J.M. Barrie wrote his story a little differently and the film _Hook_ doesn't exist, okay, okay, thank u)
> 
> Thank you for reading ♥ I'm on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/museicalitea) if you wanna say hi!


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